


Landfall

by Mythril (fantacination)



Series: #SheithWeek2k16 [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, Sheith Week 2016, Sheith Week 2016: Galra Keith/Dark Shiro, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 16:47:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8409163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantacination/pseuds/Mythril
Summary: Day 6: Shiro returns to earth, five years later.





	

Shiro hadn't expected to see these streets again. He stood on the sidewalk, face tilted up towards the sun. It was such a peaceful day. The world turned. The wind blew. The sun beat down and the plants grew. The air smelled different, like a long forgotten song, his favorite one. Finally, he was home. Five long years. It felt like five hundred. His hair was white, his temples gray, and his body scarred under the armor. But he was here. He was back.

Earth hadn’t changed much- after seeing other worlds, civilizations so far advanced that a lightyear was a blink, it seemed almost quaintly rustic.

He stepped over an overturned bike, walking along a road lined with tiny mom and pop shops, chimes swinging in the arid wind. Until the road ended and all he could see was patchy desert and the ship he'd come from.

One of them, anyway.

A tall, thin officer walked up to him, his face grizzled. “Sir, we have him.”

“Good work, Vitus,” Shiro praised him, pleased. That had taken them far less time than he'd anticipated.

But then, he thought, looking at the burnt out shell of the desert town behind him, maybe hed just forgotten how weak earthlings were.

He left the outskirts of town, tapping away the ashes from the tips of his garnet boots, and headed back for the gas station he’d left his cycle at.

Today had been recon. Nobody had been left alive in the sleepy little town. Nobody would check. Perhaps old Agatha forgot what day the bridge party was going to be. Maybe Mo slept in and was running a little late on his delivery.The human capacity for excuses, for ignoring the truth was something he had startling experience on.

This morning, Drywell had been a tiny town, population two hundred. This evening, it would be population zero.

Tomorrow, the invasion would begin.

He swung a leg over the energy cycle he'd used to ride in, holstering the shoulder cannon into the slot in the side. A squad of soldiers were scouring and scouting the perimeter to eliminate stragglers who hadn't been caught in the initial blast.

He revved the engine, the wheels spinning into existence in a blaze of purple, and drove back to the ship, his cloak a dark banner behind him.

Galran technology was perhaps the best that still existed, pristine engineering, and thanks to the repulsion, near-zero friction that responded beautifully to the touch. He arrived at the ship in the space of a song, clanking back on the ramp.

“Hold the reports,” he instructed the nearest lieutenant, walking briskly back to his quarters. He adjusted the straps that held his helmet in place as he went, pulling the snaps free.

The private rooms were a privilege of his hard-earned rank. They weren’t particularly opulent, but they were clean, well-lit and comfortably appointed.

He found Keith on the bed, angry.

His hands were tied behind his back. He'd been stripped to ensure he was unarmed, decontaminated,and dressed in a loose robe, one bare thigh peeking out.

He stiffened when Shiro approached.

‘Who or what are you people?” He demanded. Even on his knees he managed to look defiant. Even all but naked and alone he had so much spirit. So whole.

Shiro took a moment just to drink him in. His expressive eyes and pouting mouth, the slenderness of his frame even after he'd gotten older, his face sharper. There was a soft line around his mouth where there hadn't been before. He wondered who'd put it there. If it had been him.

The thought made him happier than he'd truly been in years.

“Oh, Keith,” he sighed, smiling, and slipped the helmet off his head, setting it on the stand. It had been a present from Zarkon upon his assumption of his first command. The carved-wolf face stared back out into the room, eyes empty.

Shiro's face had been scarred, once. Horrifically so. Most of his face had gotten bitten off by an enraged Hertkjn. But the Druids had changed that. They'd made his face whole again. And now his eyes were gold, like the Galra. Under the helmet, he looked just like any other Galran Commander.

He’d taken the mask off rarely. But for Keith, he would.

“Shiro?” Keith gasped. The realization is like a dawn on his face. “What did they do to you?”

“How long has it been, Keith, since I left?” Shiro asked.

Because he needed to know. He needed to know Keith had counted, too.

“Five years. Five years and six weeks, twenty nine hours,” Keith says, voice hushed. “Shiro what happened? What is this place?”

Shiro knelt in front of Keith, reaching back to cut the cords with the shaped claws of his Galran arm.

“There’s life out there, Keith. Civilizations we only dreamed of. They made me better, Keith. I'm their finest creation,” he said. “I was their Champion. Now I'm the emperor's right hand, and you, you're finally here, next to me. With you, everything will be perfect.”

“I don't understand,” Keith said. “What emperor? Who's champion? What about… what about the Holts?”

“Who?”

“Your friend! Matt holt! He and his dad, where are they?” Keith’s brow furrowed.

“Dead, I guess,” Shiro said.

Keith stared at him, stricken.

“It wouldn't matter, anyway. They would've died eventually. They're too weak. They're not like you and me. Most of this whole planet will die tomorrow. Once the druids are done.”

“Of course it matters!” Keith protested. “Since when was death not important to you? Did you change that much?”

Shiro frowned. He’d expected a better reaction. “They made me a hero. I've come back. It'll be fine. I'll keep you safe, we don't need anyone else. I just need you.”

He drew Keith's hands to the front, clasped in his, and kissed him. And kissed him. Until he tasted the blood on his lips, and hungry, went for more.

Keith stiffened, pulling back. “No. No, you're wrong. You came back _wrong,_ Shiro _.”_

Anger pulsed suddenly, a hot roar in Shiro's head. He wrapped his hand around Keith's neck and slammed him down onto the floor. His gauntlet was heavy; his arm invincible.

“What would you know?” He demanded. “You’ve been back here, living out every day just like the last, and you don’t know what I’ve seen. You don’t know--”

“ _Shiro_ -” Keith choked.

Keith was a doll in his hands, but he was a doll he's dreamt about for five years. Carefully tended, a charm. When everything else had been flayed away, he'd tucked the last kernel of his humanity inside Keith. It had festered, as his heart had shrivelled. As the pieces of him that were not useful, that would not survive; that could not, rotted away. And all he had left was this obsession where once he could dimly recall love.

“I'm not wrong!” He barked. “I'm exactly who I should be.” He squeezed. He thought about killing Keith, right there. About closing his hand until it met through skin and sinew, watching his eyes dim. And something, like a cornered animal, lowed within him. He let Keith go.

Keith gasped, rolling away, smart, Keith, lovely Keith.

Almost dead at his hand.

“You have to believe me. This is the only way. Keith,” he pleaded. It was rusty. He'd thought he'd emptied out a lifetime’s store long ago. When they'd thrown him into the cell. Into the ring. On the table to have his arm sawed off. His skull cracked. With his hand closed around a thin green neck. Snap. Again.

“I did it for you. I did it to live. I wanted to get back here, to see you again!”

“What use is this backwards planet when there are a hundred thousand more? Don't you hate it here? Didn't you say that you hated people?” And the things he has done may be terrible on earth, but he had become great. And that greatness didn't come without a cost. Couldn't Keith see?

“Shiro would have died to save this planet,” Keith said, his eyes steel.

“Then kill me!” Shiro cried. Because of Keith didn't, he knew he'd kill Keith first. He reached for him, blade out. “Kill me if you can!”

Keith ducked under his wild swing and punched him in the gut, using his weight to knock him back. He looked at him, and his voice was broken glass. “I can't. Damn you, you know I can't. I love you. I still do. You're a monster and you came back and I still love you.” He swung his fist into Shiro's cheek.

And Shiro cried.

For the first time in five years, he cried. He wept for Matt, for Professor Holt, for the peaceful little girl whose thin green neck he'd snapped. He wept for the countless cities and planets he'd razed, for the prisoners he'd tortured.

“Shiro,” Keith murmured, and cupped his face, repeating his name. He's crying with him, damp streaks on his disinfectant-chilled skin. “Takashi.”

It shattered him. “Don’t call me that!” Nobody had called him that for too long. It was too old a name. Too close to things he’d had to forget. Underneath the armor was a fragile patchwork of a man thrice broken, pieces picked and forged into an automaton that worked the only way it could.

He didn’t know how to work without it, without this madness that glued the pieces back together.

“I love you. Whatever you did. Whatever happened. I still love you.”

“I tried to kill you.” He still might. The madness lies under his skin, bleeding.

“I won’t let you go again. I can’t. I’ll work it out. Whatever it is that’s wrong, I’ll make it right.”

Keith's arms were warm, his grip tight.

Tomorrow the invasion would begin. Today there was just Keith and he.

And Shiro, Shiro tilted his face up into the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Day 6: Galra Keith/ **Dark Shiro**  
>  Shiro returns to earth, five years later.
> 
> Or What if Shiro never managed to escape the Galra? 
> 
> Keith, Pidge, Lance and Hunk would never have been brought together. Voltron wouldn't have formed. And alone, captured, tortured, Shiro only has two options: death or survival.


End file.
